This journal documents the author's experiences as a television writer. To read the story from its inception, go to the beginning.

October 1, 2001

Philosophical nightmares
I am disturbed. It is my own fault, reading Susan Sontag late at night as I have just done. She wrote, "Love dies because its birth was an error." And as her words entered the pathways of my cerebrum, my mind drifted to relationships no more, passions discarded, and life goals unmet. It is hard for me to reconcile the truth so obvious in her words with my belief in the value of process. I like to think that all love, passion, yearning, and intense emotion, lasting or otherwise, is part of a continuum leading to something greater. Better. Deeper. But now I am left to wonder if the error of faded love will lead to something more fulfilling.

For seven years I was passionate about acting. I studied, volunteered at theatres, took acting jobs for little or no pay, and survived on not much else but my love for the art. I eventually got better paying work performing as part of the national touring company for a New York theatre. I had a recurring role on a lousy nation-wide cable television show that was mercifully cancelled after a single season. I went to hundreds of auditions and mailed thousands of headshots, resumes, and postcards to anyone who might hire me. But after the seven years, my involvement with the craft of acting completely stopped. Does this mean the time I spent as an actor was an error? What about women from my past I once loved, but who no longer take precedence in my thoughts? Were those relationships without merit? And what happens if my current passion for writing ebbs? Are the thousands of hours I spend wringing prose from my wilted cranium just fodder for a cosmic tally of wasted effort?

I know the answers to these questions. The fact that I am not performing for an audience does not diminish my love of acting; just as feelings of love for a woman from my past are possible, though she is no longer a part of my life. Sontag's pithy statement relies on the reader coming to the conclusion that true love is forever, whether it's cultivated in the physical world or not. So the error she speaks of can be reserved for those instances where true love never actually existed.

If I can keep all this straight in my head, I have a chance of holding onto my sanity. Regardless of whether I achieve my dream or not.

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� 2001 - 2002 tv writer. All rights reserved.